The large triggerfish Balistes polylepis Steindachner, the most
common species of the family in the eastern Pacific, was previously reported
from Hawai'i as Pseudobalistes juscus (Bloch & Schneider) or questionably as
B. ...

When the great German geographer August Petermann called
the botanist/explorer Ferdinand von Mueller "the Humboldt of Australia,"
what did he have in mind? Elaborating the circumstances of his doing so gives
us a new ...

During the early l850s, the United States launched two major
expeditions to the Pacific, as well as a series of surveys of the American West.
Although the U.S. Army had developed a strong symbiotic relationship with
the ...

A new species of scincid lizard, Lioscincus maruia Sadlier, Whitaker
& Bauer, n. sp., is described from the central ranges of New Caledonia. It
is a moderate-sized species of skink with a particularly long tail. It is ...

Museums are the medium of our age. As such, the museum
world cannot be isolated from political realities. On the contrary, far from their
idealized image as institutional constants, innocently engaged in the "collectio ...

Despite its enormous scope, the survey of HMS Herald, like
most British scientific voyages after the time of Captain Cook, is little known.
This article's discussion of naturalist Berthold Seemann's accounts of the ...

Tropical biological stations have become in the last half-century
a well-established phenomenon. They are, however, but a modem manifestation
of a long tradition of institutionalized study of tropical biological ...

Two new species of the diplodactylid gecko Bavayia are described
from restricted areas within the main island of New Caledonia. Both species are
characterized by small size, a single row of preanal pores, and distinctive ...

Qualitative and quantitative features are reported for stem wood
of 13 collections of 12 species of the Hawaiian genus Dubautia. Although the
species share a basic wood plan, quantitative expressions range widely, ...